Over the past 70 years, computer systems and computer-system components have rapidly evolved, producing a relentless increase in computational bandwidth and capabilities and decrease in cost, size, and power consumption. Small, inexpensive personal computers of the current generation feature computational bandwidths, capabilities, and capacities that greatly exceed those of high-end supercomputers of previous generations. The increase in computational bandwidth and capabilities is often attributed to a steady decrease in the dimensions of features that can be manufactured within integrated circuits, which increases the densities of integrated-circuit components, including transistors, signal lines, diodes, and capacitors, that can be included within microprocessor integrated circuits.
The rapid evolution of computers and computer systems has also been driven by enormous advances in computer programming and in many of the other hardware components of computer systems. For example, the capabilities and capacities of various types of data-storage components, including various types of electronic memories and mass-storage devices, have increased, in many cases, even more rapidly than those of microprocessor integrated circuits, vastly increasing both the computational bandwidths as well as data-storage capacities of modern computer systems.
Currently, further decrease in feature size of integrated circuits is approaching a number of seemingly fundamental physical constraints and limits. In order to reduce feature sizes below 20 nanometers, and still produce reasonable yields of robust, functional integrated circuits, new types of integrated-circuit architectures and manufacturing processes are being developed to replace current architectures and manufacturing processes. As one example, dense, nanoscale circuitry may, in the future, be manufactured by employing self-assembly of molecular-sized components, nano-imprinting, and additional new manufacturing techniques that are the subjects of current research and development. Similarly, the widely used dynamic random access memory (“DRAM”) and other types of electronic memories and mass-storage devices and media may be, in the future, replaced with newer technologies, due to physical constraints and limitations associated with further decreasing the sizes of physical memory-storage features implemented according to currently available technologies. Researchers, developers, and manufacturers of electronic memories and mass-storage devices continue to seek new technologies to allow for continued increase in the capacities and capabilities of electronic memories and mass-storage devices while continuing to decrease the cost and power consumption of electronic memories and mass-storage devices.